Wasting your time with things I find interesting, amusing, or enraging. Reinke does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations

Chicago, and Why Public School Unions StrikePosted by Andrew J. CoulsonSource: Chicago Tribune

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Chicago’s teachers have just walked off the job, and most of the media coverage is quick to point out that this is the city’s first strike in a generation. But is anyone really that surprised by a public school union striking just as kids are supposed to be heading back to class in September? Wouldn’t you be a lot more shocked if you logged on to Amazon.com and were greeted by the message that its site was down due to an employee walkout? Or if you took the kids to the movies to see the latest cartoon extravaganza and found picketing ticket-takers? What is it about public schools—and other government enterprises, for that matter—that have made their unions so much more dominant than those in the private sector? [Two thirds of the public school workforce is unionized compared to about 7 percent in the private sector].

Competitors. Or, rather, the lack of them. Private sector workers can only demand so much from their companies before the demands become self-defeating. Get a pension package that’s too cushy, a salary that’s too far above the market rate, and the employer will have to pass those costs on to customers. And if those higher prices aren’t accompanied by correspondingly better quality, customers will simply go elsewhere—hurting the employees who asked for more than the market would bear.

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In the absence of real private sector competition and parental choice, public school unions have been able to drive up the system’s costs without needing to show improvement in performance. Sooner or later, Illinois will adopt a system, like education tax credits, that provides real choice and competition, because the current system will ultimately bankrupt the state.

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I don’t understand why schools are ANY different than fast food.

I spend no resources about planning for my “burger needs” and the invisible hand of the (relatively) free market provisions three choices within a mile or two of my house. And, they battle ferociously for my business.

Why are “public goods” any different?

Because we’ve let the ruling class convince us that we can’t live without their benign beneficial leadership for which they extract a life of leisure.

Argh!

Sam Walmart revolutionized retailing for which he was well rewarded. Pick out ANY one of the myriad of politicians and bureaucrats, what have they accomplished for you?

America has become a statist, freedom-hating, catch-phrase espousing, ignorant, and nightmarish shadow of its own, once great, (though still flawed) self. And the easiest way that we can think to prove this claim, follows:

I OWN my own body! Ownership means; dominion! I control or don’t, I choose or don’t, I determine or don’t, every single facet of my controllable conscious existence. I’m limited by nothing but reality and the respect of others same right to the lack of said limitations.

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The “government” claims dominion over you every time it demands an ID from you to buy alcohol! It claims dominion over you every time it demands a card from your doctor to buy marijuana or to get a permit to carry a gun! It claims dominion every time is assumes it has a rightful place in your medical business! It claims dominion every time is supposes it knows how to better prepare you for your retirement. It claims dominion every time it suggests or demands of you whom to kill or whom to die for. And it insults all of us to a point of intolerable degradation when it locks up people who video record its agents (the cop’s) violating the few limitations it still purports to impose upon itself!

The state is controlling your body and what you can and cannot do with it. They have already invoked a weird version of right-wing state socialism, and a total left-wing Nazi police state is quick on its heels. The powers that be are laughing because most Americans haven’t the faintest idea what is actually going on. They seem to know something is wrong, but being philosophically crippled as they are (thanks to the public school system) they haven’t the faintest idea how to determine the cause. In public school you are taught that the “government” is your friend, you are taught that “rights come from “government” that it’s okay to skip the two when you count to ten during the Bill of Rights. You are taught to bow down and lick the hand that “teaches” you, or else detention and a call to your parents will ensue. And if your parents take your side, then they are in trouble! You’re taught that if it wasn’t for “government”, the big-bad-business man will come in and take over everything and children will work for two cents an hour in sweat shops. Or that “terrorists” (ever notice the smallest army is always called a “terrorist?”) will be on every plane and every street corner.

At a bare minimum, part of the solution to school violence and poor academic performance should be the expulsion of students who engage in assaults and disrespectful behavior. You say, “What’s to be done for these students?” Even if we don’t know what to do with them, how compassionate and intelligent is it to permit them to make education impossible for other students?

The fact that black parents, teachers, politicians and civil rights organizations tolerate and make excuses for the despicable and destructive behavior of so many young blacks is a gross betrayal of the memory, struggle, sacrifice, sweat and blood of our ancestors. The sorry and tragic state of black education is not going to be turned around until there’s a change in what’s acceptable and unacceptable behavior by young people. That change has to come from within the black community.

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I’m in no position to comment on this, BUT, (and there is always a BIG butt), I can assert that the meme of Gooferment Skrules is wrong.

In the 80’s, I spent a lot of time and effort to gather data and draw conclusions. At the time, the most generous calculation of per pupil cost demonstrated that the State spending was DOUBLE the most expensive private school in the state. DOUBLE! Just send everyone to the Peddie School in Princeton. So my plan was a FORTY year workout. The first twenty was getting the State out of the biz of running the schools (i.e., 5% per year of students were allowed to spend their “education voucher” anywhere they wanted to). The second twenty was getting the State out of paying for education (i.e., the voucher amount would be reduced 5% every year until it reached zero). Everyone has time to adapt.

The three major class of comments: (1) the poor can’t afford to educate their children; (2) the education complex is too deeply entrenched to allow this to happen; and (3) it takes too long. The poor decides to have children and saddles “the public” with the problem. The education complex is even more entrenched. And, we’re ¾ of the way down that timeframe and further away from any solution.

We decided to download a free preview version of E.O. Wilson’s “Life on Earth” textbook to get a feel for the features (the preview comes with only two chapters). Navigating through chapters and sections of a textbook works great on the iPad. You swipe to switch chapters, or touch sections or pages to get right into the content. We think this will be useful for students who need to jump around through chapters. Once you’re looking at a page, you also have touch options, such as a pinch, which shrinks a page, and slide, which returns it to the navigation area on the bottom of the chapter screen.

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Looks like Apple hit this one out of the park.

(I’ve got to upgrade my MACBOOKAIR to try the “AUTHOR” software.)

If it’s as easy and as free as they say, it might be another even bigger revolution. Figure education, from a technology pov, hasn’t changed since Plato taught Aristotle.

This is BOTH a paradigm and meme shift.

Wonder how to extract some of the value from such a shift?

And, how does it impact medicine, engineering, and Informaton Technology?

Free AUTHOR software and easy e-publishing throws the doors open even wider than LULU did.

Paul was right on both wars, on the bailout of the banks and continues to be right about the need for transparency at the fed. He is right about gay marriage and he is right on most civil liberties issues and the drug war.

But Ron Paul is not a progressive. Ron Paul is not anti-corporate. He believes that empowering business is the best way to accomplish all good things and that government has no role to play in ensuring a level playing field. It was Paul’s dismissal of a government role in health care that elicited the shout of “let him die” during the Republican debates.

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AND A COMMENT

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Anonymous Anonymous said…

Excellent points by Hank K. Ron Paul would destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and any social program that helps ordinary folks. He would probably be for assisting the privatization of our public schools. Libertarianism is filth, a despicable bunch of garbage that’s great for the greedy millionaires and greedy billionaires (as opposed to the responsible and altruistic millionaires and billionaires) who don’t want to pay their fair share in taxes. Under libertarianism, if you become disabled and can no longer work, then tough luck or go out in the street and beg for charity. Libertarians say, let the charities take care of the millions who are disabled, elderly or too poor. It’s an idiotic notion to think that charities are even close to being able to help the 50 millions uninsured. Dialysis costs about $150,000 per year and there are many thousands of people in this country with kidney disease or kidney failure. Medications cost thousands per year, there aren’t enough charities on earth to deal with these numbers. I would not vote for Ron Paul even if you put a gun to my head.

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And, everything today is just working perfectly and at costs we can afford?

Ron Paul hasn’t said anything about destroying everything. He has said that we need real cuts in Gooferment spending. Do you dsagree?

For example, he says the Federal Gooferment should have no role in education. Let the States do it. So we send money to Federal Gooferment to send back to the state Gooferment. There’s a swag that says ½ of any money passing through a Gooferment entity loses ½ its value due to the cost og handling. Sending a dollar to the Feds gets maybe 25¢s back! Eliminate the overhead.

Of course that will totally destroy the education establishment. And, maybe we can have a national and state discusion on “education”. Personally, I authored a paper for Hands Across New Jersey on how to transition “education” from Gooferment to parents over 40 years. (Under the theory that parents are in a better position to educate their children. And cheaper and better. They made the decision to have them; they should provide for them.) I’m frustrated because if HANJ wasn’t subverted by the duopoly, we’d almost be out of the problem.

You bring up charity, charity care, and the cost of medicine. But you ignore the role of Gooferment in driving up the cost of healthcare. Just like it drives up the cost of “education”.

Argh!

I think that Ron Paul represents the essence of the Taft Republicans. It’s been lost for decades and we have a 15T$ debt, deficits for as far as the eyes can see, unfunded liabilities somewhere between 50T$ and 150T$ depending upon who counts what, and a dismal economic future. Perhaps, you might consider that Socialism doesn’t work. Didn’t for the Soviet Union. And, won’t for the USA.

I frequently write about new learning technologies, but there are lots of low tech learning innovations (i.e., produce better outcomes and potentially cost less). Here’s a lit of 18. I bet you can add two to the list to make it an even 20. At this point, some aren’t really innovations, they are demonstrated best practices but they exist in so few places they are worth mentioning.

1. High expectations and future focus. In the first minute of visiting an Aspire elementary school you see, feel, and hear about the college going focus — a unique and powerful combination of high expectations and future orientation.

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Seems like this is a “universal” low tech list. Never saw an enterprise use this approach.